


through burning cities and napalm skies.

by amaanogawa



Series: to the ends of the earth with you [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Incredibly self indulgent, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 15:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13707015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaanogawa/pseuds/amaanogawa
Summary: "You would think that after the world ends, there would be nothing left to say. Turns out, there’s nothing farther from the truth. There iseverythingto say, because everything has ended and nothing matters anymore except what they have left unsaid."sequel towherever you go, whatever it takes.





	through burning cities and napalm skies.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this fic is a sequel to my other work, [wherever you go, whatever it takes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10888116), so you'll definitely want to give that a read first.
> 
> i hope you enjoy!
> 
> title from [ocean eyes by billie eilish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u5gDCNwTiw).

It still happens sometimes.  
  
Kuroo is there in front of him, bone pale, face gaunt, eyes lifeless and Daichi is screaming bloody murder, or at least he’s trying to, but his voice isn’t coming out. He tries to reach out to Kuroo, to run to where he is, but his legs don’t work and Kuroo is somehow _right there_ but not there at all. And then the Infected swarm. They crowd around them, mouths wide open, tearing flesh from bone, there’s blood everywhere, and-  
  
That’s when Daichi wakes up each time, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.  
  
“Nightmare?” Kuroo asks sleepily, sitting up beside him, a concerned frown etched on his face. “Same one?”  
  
Daichi can only nod, his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest. Comforting arms wrap tightly around his shaking body. Kuroo cradles Daichi close, running a soothing palm up and down the curve of his back, rests his cheek against the top of Daichi’s head.  
  
“I’m here.” He murmurs softly, as he always does when Daichi has this nightmare. “I’m here, and you’re here with me. We’re okay.”  
  
Kuroo has nightmares too, but not like Daichi has them. After all, he had been delirious with fever while Daichi had been forced to helplessly watch the life fade from his sickly body. Ironically, Kuroo can only remember the good parts of the day they almost died, namely when Daichi had kissed him and told him that he loved him. But Daichi remembers everything. The way that Kuroo had looked, futilely struggling to stay awake and then inevitably, closing his eyes fully believing that the two of them were going to die.

Who would have known? Apparently nearly dying stays with you, even after you are somehow miraculously saved by a kind passerby.  
  
During nights like this, Kuroo lays them both down, holding Daichi close and whispering reassuring nothings into his ear until Daichi starts to drift off to sleep.  
  
Even if the world is still very much one of horrors and death beyond their cheap little polyester tent, while he’s held tight in Kuroo’s arms, Daichi can somehow forget about the nightmares for the few hours they have before the sun rises again.  
  
\---  
  
When Daichi wakes, Kuroo is running a gentle hand through his hair with a fond smile on his face.  
  
“Good morning.” He says, leaning over to press a kiss to the corner of Daichi’s mouth.  
  
“Mm.” Daichi mumbles, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Morning.”  
  
They both busy themselves with getting dressed for the day, maneuvering around their limited space with practiced fluidity. Since they settled down in the community that Takuya had brought them back to, they’ve each been able to collect a few more items of clothing during runs into the nearest town. The community had been welcoming, and it was fairly easy to blend into their new surroundings. Daichi had been assigned to the construction crew which was responsible for planning new buildings within the community. Currently, they were busy drawing up plans to get residents out of tents and into actual houses.

Kuroo had been assigned as a runner. They make trips into nearby towns, collect food, medicine, blankets, clothing, and construction materials. Daichi can understand why- Kuroo is resourceful, street smart, and quick on his feet. He makes an excellent runner. It’s just that every time Daichi watches him drive out of the community gates with the rest of the runner team, he feels like he’s going to be sick. Daichi nearly lost Kuroo once. He knows he won’t survive a second time.  
  
Beside him, Kuroo is tugging a simple black shirt over his head. He has finally started filling out again, now that he’s eating properly and exercising regularly as part of his daily jobs. Although he’s still on the thin side, far from as healthy as he had been back during his athlete days, at the very least his ribs are no longer protruding from under his skin like they had before, and it’s enough to bring a sense of relief to Daichi’s chest.  
  
Daichi reaches over to lay his palm flat against Kuroo’s sternum. He can feel Kuroo’s heart thrumming underneath his fingertips. Each beat fills Daichi with a little more courage to face the day.  
  
“What’s up?” Kuroo smiles, covering Daichi’s hand with his own.  
  
He tries so hard not to let his insecurities bleed into his daily life, and yet it’s nearly impossible not to. In this world where he has already lost everything, there is only Kuroo left. There is only this one person in front of him, with his usual wild bedhead sticking up every which way, a matching golden band on his finger, and a smile that makes Daichi feel as if they might truly be able to find happiness in this fucked up dystopian world of theirs.  
  
“Nothing.” Daichi finally says, withdrawing his hand. “Do you have a run today?”  
  
“Nope. Our next run isn’t until next week. I’m going to help around the crops today.”

Daichi smiles, holds Kuroo’s cheeks between his hands. Wishes that he didn’t have to let go. Instead, he leans in and presses his lips softly to Kuroo’s forehead. “Good. I’ll see you after work hours then. Take it easy, okay?”

“See you.” Kuroo flashes a grin before crawling out of their tent.

“Yea,” Daichi whispers, staring out after him. “See you.”

\---

Except Daichi barely sees Kuroo over the next week, save for the brief moments between when Kuroo finally comes back to their tent, long past work hours, and when he falls asleep only a few minutes later. He leaves early in the morning and returns late every day, and Daichi isn’t usually this person, chewing on his nails fretfully whilst waiting for his husband to come home. It’s just that-

The existence of this community was supposed to be a beacon of hope, but somehow, lately it has morphed into a source of insecurity that turns over and over in the pit of Daichi’s stomach. There are other people, living, breathing, healthy people and maybe- maybe the fact that Daichi and Kuroo aren’t really the last two people on earth has _changed_ things. Changed things between them, changed things for _Kuroo_.

It hasn’t for Daichi.

He still loves Kuroo just as he has since that night all those years ago, since the rippling lights dancing across the freckles on the bridge of Kuroo’s nose somehow turned into constellations, into galaxies upon galaxies all contained right there atop Kuroo’s skin.

It’s those galaxies, those constellations, those stars that Daichi thinks about. Always, ever since that night.

“Come home, Kuroo.” Daichi whispers, head buried in his arms as he waits, yet again for Kuroo to return.

\---

“You didn’t come back last night.”

Daichi finds Kuroo at the makeshift canteen, a large tent crafted from vinyl tarp with picnic benches throughout and a meal serving station at one end. He smiles sleepily up from his seat, bags under his eyes and hair all flopped over, while absentmindedly poking at a bowl of grey-ish looking porridge.

“I know.” He says, stifling a yawn. “There’s this project I’ve been helping with and there was only a small stretch left to go so I just pulled an all-nighter.”

“You should have told me.” Daichi folds his arms across his chest, irritation bubbling up his throat. “I was worried.”

Kuroo smiles again, damn him, charming as always despite looking as rough as he does, and reaches out to take hold of Daichi’s hand. “I should have. Sorry.”

All the fight deflates from Daichi’s body as he squeezes Kuroo’s hand back. He shouldn’t be like this, he knows, because Kuroo’s a grown man and he’s busy helping with the development of their community because it’s the end of the freaking world and Daichi’s, what, throwing a fit because he’s scared of Kuroo outgrowing him? What is he _doing_?

He sighs, reaches out to pet Kuroo’s uncharacteristically droopy locks. “You look exhausted.”

“Speak for yourself. How is it that I’m the one who worked through the night and yet you’re the one who looks like you haven’t slept?” Kuroo teases, a smirk playing on the edge of his lips. ”You really love me that much?”  
  
Daichi rolls his eyes, smacks Kuroo on the shoulder and stomps off to grab himself some cold, lumpy porridge, Kuroo’s laughter following him as he goes.

 _I do,_ he thinks, fingers shaking.

_I do._

\---

Daichi throws himself into his work to keep his mind from wandering. He would never have guessed that studying architecture in university would come in handy during the apocalypse, but turns out, his skill set was exactly what the community was lacking. Pouring over the assortment of blueprints laid out across his work table helps ease the unsettling feeling in his gut, and the burning in his eyes from hours of staring at supply lists keeps him from thinking about Kuroo’s smile, Kuroo’s eyes, about _Kuroo_. He’s at the construction shed long after everyone bids him a good night and returns to their respective loved ones, still scratching away with his pencil.

It helps.

That is, until his eyes can no longer focus and his lines are curving all over the place, and Daichi knows it’s time to call it a night, to return to yet another probably empty tent. He sighs, rolling up the papers and stuffing them in their drawers before clicking off the light and heading out the door.

When he steps outside, he’s so tired that he almost doesn’t notice the two lines of light stretching out into the distance, creating a pathway from beneath his feet starting at the door of the construction shed and running into the murky depths of the forest.

“Wha-” Daichi furrows his brows, looking around in confusion. There’s no one in the vicinity, and the community is dark and quiet. He warily takes a step onto the dirt, closing the shed door behind him and picking up one of the lights from the ground.

It’s a jar of fireflies, with holes poked into the top of the jar lid like he used to do when he was a kid.

“Hello?” He calls out into the darkness, not really expecting a reply. The only responses are the cicadas chirruping from the forest, beckoning him in along with the path of light. Daichi knows that the fence cuts the forest off in that direction a couple hundred meters in, but his feet start moving regardless, the jar of fireflies still clutched in his hand. The summer air is strangely cool tonight, and a light breeze brushes through his hair as he follows the straight path. He can see the fence up ahead, just as he knew it would be.

Except there’s a door now, and it smells of newly cut wood.

His confusion runs deeper as he brushes his fingers along the grain of the wood. Any project like this should have been run by his team first, but he didn’t remember receiving a request for an extension past the fence. Reaching out, he pushes gingerly on the door which opens up to reveal a rather narrow, fenced in pathway. He continues walking, vaguely realizing that he’s walking at an incline, but the path just seems to stretch on and on and Daichi’s ashamed to admit that he’s breathing significantly heavier by the time he can see the end.

The first thing he sees when he emerges are stars.

Bottles and bottles of stars, floating right before his very eyes.

“Took you long enough.”

Kuroo is sitting right in the middle of it all, legs crossed, smile stretching a mile long across his face. “I’ve been waiting for hours, you damn workaholic.”

“Kuroo?” Daichi whispers, staring at him in unabashed awe. “What is this?”

“Our first date.” Kuroo grins, waving him forward. “Come on, get over here already.”

 As he walks forward, Daichi realizes that the floating lights aren’t stars. They’re more jars of fireflies, hundreds of them, bottles of all different shapes and sizes suspended from twine and tied to an enormous tree overhead. Just past the tree is the drop off of a cliff side, overlooking miles and miles of forest.

“Did you do this?” He asks, still looking up in wonder. “How many of them are there?”

“I lost count somewhere around four hundred and thirty six. Fireflies, that is.” Kuroo chuckles, taking Daichi’s hand and gently pulling him down to the blanket that Kuroo has laid out underneath him.

“Is this what you were doing last night? Catching fireflies?”

“I mean, I had to do it all in one night because I didn’t want to keep them in the jars for too long. They only live around a week, it’s too sad to have them stay in a jar the entire time.”

Daichi laughs, and suddenly all the worrying, all the insecurity over the past month bleeds right out of his skin, because how on earth could he possibly have been worried about Kuroo being unfaithful when it was _Kuroo_? Kuroo, who had so much goodness and a heart so kind that he lost sleep because he felt bad for the fireflies. Daichi doesn’t know where he lost sight of who they were, how he forgot that despite the apocalypse and everything it changes they are still _Daichi and Kuroo_ , the same people they once were.

“Cheesiest first date, remember? I’m crossing things off my bucket list.” Kuroo grins, pulling a bottle of wine out from behind his back. “I don’t have glasses though. We’re going to have to drink from the bottle, like gentlemen.”

“Where on earth did you get that?”

“I stashed it in my bag when I found it on our last run.” He unscrews the cap before taking a swig and makes a disgusted face. “I wish I could tell if that’s good or not, but honestly, it just tastes like regret from freshman year.”

“At least it’s not that nasty boxed wine you used to buy in bulk.” Daichi puts the bottle to his mouth, takes a long sip, and yep, that certainly does just taste of nostalgia and regret. Kuroo snorts, giving a one shouldered shrug. This is talk about the old days, back when civilization was still civilization, like it will never be again.

They pass the bottle between the two of them in silence, staring out past the cliff side. It’s a crystal clear night, and there are billions upon billions of stars dotting the sky above them. It stretches out like a pathway to somewhere far, far away, unreachable to human hands. Daichi knows he would go there regardless, just as long as Kuroo was with him. Anywhere, as long as he had this one person.

“Stargazing on the grassy hill behind our apartment.” Daichi whispers, and even without looking, he knows that Kuroo is smiling beside him.

“The Ferris wheel is an unachievable dream now, I suppose.”

“We’ll come up with new ones. Together, this time.”

Kuroo doesn’t respond, suddenly lapsing back into silence as he traces his finger along the lip of the wine bottle.

“Y’know, Daichi, I-” He takes a stuttering breath before continuing, words spilling out from between his lips a million miles a minute. “I’ve been meaning to say this to you since I got better, but I’ve been too scared to, I guess, even though I know I have to. Anyway, I’m just going to ramble on now- I know I all but dumped my feelings on you at a really shitty time, and I’m not saying I don’t believe that you think you love me back, but considering the circumstances you probably didn’t have much of a choice, y’know? And now we’ve discovered this entire community, and there’s so much more than we thought there was, and- I guess I’m just saying, that it’s okay. If you don’t.”

“If I don’t what?” Daichi quirks his lips bemusedly, because despite his blubbering, he knows exactly what Kuroo is saying. It’s a reflection of all of Daichi’s worries over the past month, the exact same ones, and this is always how it’s going to be, isn’t it? No matter how much they’re struggling, how far away from each other they get, they will always end up at the same point somehow, and gosh, it’s only now that Daichi realizes just how stupid they both are. That despite surviving the apocalypse they’re both just two idiots bumbling their ways through loving each other the best way they know how.

“If you don’t,” Kuroo whispers, dipping his head low, “love me.”

You would think that after the world ends, there would be nothing left to say. Turns out, there’s nothing farther from the truth. There is _everything_ to say, because everything has ended and nothing matters anymore except what they have left unsaid. Daichi takes a long swig of their wine, trying to collect his thoughts properly. He wants this to come out right.

“You know when I first realized that I love you?” Daichi ends up saying, soft.

Kuroo is staring, lips pinched together so tightly that they turn white.

Daichi takes a breath.

And then he just, he just _talks_.

“It was second year, that one week where I was finishing my final project for my Urban Design course, and you were doing your research paper on GMOs. You remember? Neither of us had slept for maybe 47 hours, or something like that, and I was sure one of us would die from a heart attack after how much red bull we drank. It was the middle of the night, and I was pretty much passing out on my sketch paper when you suddenly jumped up and started yelling for no reason.

“And then you stared at me with this absolutely maniacal expression, I swear I thought you were going to kill me because of some sleep deprivation induced psychosis. But you grabbed my wrist and pulled me right out of my chair, and started going on about how school is a flawed system that saps your life away and we should fight the power before we become brainless zombies that work a 9-5 corporate office job and spend our entire lives looking forward to the weekend so we can drink and forget how shitty our lives are. I thought you had finally lost it. I don’t know why I followed you. I think I was just too tired to fight back, to be honest.

“We ended up at that park, with the stage, right? And there were these dancers on the stage, and they were terrible. A bunch of high school kids who didn’t really know how to breakdance but they were too naïve to realize just how terrible at it they were. I was staring at you for some reason, just like I always was when things were bad, or when they were good for that matter, and you’d _think_ that would’ve tipped me off earlier, wouldn’t you? Anyway, the lights from the stage, those multicoloured dots, they were moving across your face, your god awful face all pale and grey from exhaustion, and I couldn’t help but realize you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.

“It was like there were stars coming to life on your skin, and maybe I was hallucinating because of how tired I was, or maybe I wasn’t. But all I know is that was the moment I _realized_ I love you, not the moment I _fell_ in love with you, because God knows when that was. Probably ages ago, because I’m an idiot, and you’re an idiot, and somehow we’ve come all this way together and yet neither of us understand a single thing. All I know is that I’ve loved you for years and I never told you, and somehow, for reasons I have no idea about, you’ve loved me for years and never told me, either.”

It comes pouring out like a storm, an uncontainable hurricane, a confession, or maybe a prayer of hope.

“All I know is,” Daichi continues, unwavering and unafraid, “is that the world could burn up right where we stand and the last thing I would think about is how those lights looked, dancing across your face that night. So I think that means that I love you, that I’ve always loved you. Apocalypse or not. Community or not. It wasn’t because you forced your feelings on me at a shitty time. It’s been that way since forever. The end of the world hasn’t changed that, so you’re stuck with me, alright? Get used to it.”

When the last words leave Daichi’s lips in a single _whoosh_ of a breath, Kuroo is grinning, wide and brilliant and every bit as beautiful as that one night years ago.

“You sap.” He says, grinning so big his eyes crinkle at the corners, “you’re disgusting.”

“Oh I _know_.”

And then they just sit like that, staring at each other with bated breaths, Kuroo looking more than a little starry eyed from everything that Daichi had just spilled from his chest and Daichi reeling from the fact that he actually it all. He’s gone and thrown all his cards to the wind, cut out his own heart and bottled up his soul and bared it to Kuroo for the taking.

But he’s not scared, not even a little bit. Both those things have always belonged to Kuroo anyway, long before the rings on the fourth finger of their left hands, and they will belong to him long afterwards as well.

“I have one more thing.” Daichi admits, shifting his hips so that he can reach into his back pocket to pull out a folded paper, worn at the edges. “For you.”

Kuroo accepts the paper, unfolds it gently with curious eyes.

“They’re…blueprints?”

“For our house.” For some reason _this_ is what finally puts a blush on Daichi’s face, not the long winded confession of love that came pouring out of his own mouth just minutes ago, but _this_. “I finished it ages ago but I was so caught up with stupid stuff that I couldn’t bring myself to give it to you. I mean, it’s the same as every other house in the community, but ours was the original. Because I designed it, so-“

“You’re going to build me a house.” Kuroo breathes, staring at the paper in his hands.

“…yes?”

“Like in The fucking Notebook.”

“I mean-”

Kuroo has his arms around Daichi before he can even finish his sentence, pulling them both down to the ground. He’s laughing and peppering Daichi’s face with kisses at the same time, rolling them over so that Daichi’s back is on the ground and he’s staring up into Kuroo’s face with wonder as he pulls away.

At the sight of Kuroo’s face breathless and flushed from laughter, haloed by a sea of stars that are somehow worlds away and yet right before their very fingertips, Daichi knows they’re going to be alright.

Because for this, he would survive anything he had to. Be it hell or high water, napalm skies or the end of the world as they knew it, he would always, _always_ come home. This was his forever.

And apocalypse be damned, that’s happier an ending than Daichi could ever have dreamed of.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](https://amaanogawa.tumblr.com)


End file.
